http://www.care2.com/greenliving/all-purpose-gluten-free-flour-mix.html
All-Purpose Gluten Free Flour Mix
By John Chappell, Green Options
Gluten free baking is not for the faint of heart or the timid of soul. The tried and true baking results that come from the familiar use of wheat flour are substantially difficult to reproduce without our old friends, wheat, rye, and barley. With some experimentation and a little tenacity, you can find a good gluten free flour mix, and still have some of the same baked treats you once enjoyed before you relinquished all gluten related items.
In my three years of learning to cook and bake gluten free, I’ve tried numerous combinations of flours and prepackaged mixes. Some were pretty good, but most spanned the spectrum between OK and outright terrible. I looked for gluten free flours in recipe books, in online searches, and throughout the blogosphere, and finally found the best all purpose flour mix in a cookbook - Gluten Free Baking Classics by Annalise Roberts.
Of the many cookbooks I’ve read over the years, Gluten Free Baking Classics, is one of my favorites. It’s simple and straightforward, and has recipes that I frequently utilize. After locating a gluten free flour mix that made a good loaf of bread, I put it through it’s paces and made everything from cornbread to coffee cake, and it held up better than any of the other mixes I tried.
The gluten free flour recipe is:
- 2 cups brown rice flour (extra finely ground)
- 2/3 cup potato starch (not potato flour)
- 1/3 cup tapioca flour
I usually mix up triple the recipe above (it comes out easily to 6 cups brown rice flour, 2 cups potato starch, and 1 cup tapioca flour) and store it in a large glass container. The flours have various textures, and since the brown rice is a bit grittier it settles a bit on the bottom of the jar, so the container must be shaken well before every use.
You can read more about gluten free living in Celiac Disease - The Ultimate Gluten Free Experience and Gluten Free Alternatives to Traditional Pasta.
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11 comments
add your comment »I've just been tested for CD and haven't gotten the results, but I've been doing a lot of reading...although I haven't yet tried the recipes, the Culinary Institute of America has a fabulous gluten-free baking cookbook that I intend to try, especially if I do test gluten intolerant....just thought I'd share
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Cool info...I have a new friend that must avoid gluten and I knew nothing about it and now I do. YAY...now I can bake him some treats!
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Adam - I don't know about that specific recipe, but go to livingwithout.com and check their recipe files. They're a wonderful magazine for people with food allergies. Every recipe they have is gluten/dairy free, and they also give options for egg, nut, and other allergies. You can sign up to get a free recipe in your e-mail every week. If you can't find cinamon bread, perhaps you could alter an existing recipe to be close?
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Hi. I am new to this website and like it very much. I would like to know if you have a recipe for Cinnamon Breakfast Bread using Mary’s Gluten Free All Purpose Flour blend? Thanks. Keep up the good work!!
r4 dsi
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It can be really hard when you have to take wheat and gluten out of the picture. I've been Celiac for 4 years now. =P It sucks. But thank goodness for Bob's Red Mill products. They have a gluten free flour mix that's really pretty good found here: http://www.bobsredmill.com/gf-all_purpose-baking-flour.html. They have a lot of really good products and they can be found at Fred Meyer, Winco, Whole Foods and other I bet health food stores.
What I just learned recently about why so many people are coming up with this ugly intolerance to wheat is that it's a micro organism that's infiltrated these grain silos and apparently affecting the durum wheat strains. It's the little organism that causes our indigestion and intolerance from what I learned.
Although aside from that I also learned that Kamut (being the purest of wheat) is actually digestible in many that have an intolerance to wheat and gluten. While Kamut (ancient Egypt's grain) still has gluten in it, it's a different type of gluten and has more proteins and nutrients in it that it's modern genetically modified durum relative (and we wonder why we can't digest things--they keep modifying our food! lol). Here is a very insightful website about it: http://www.kamut.com/
Kamut is a heavier grain and while cooking with it you'd almost think that you were cooking with a GF flour but it's not GF. It's way better and that whole starch problem of being stuck with the GF diet, goes away as this opens up SOOO many more opt
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I bought my own grain grinder when I started making homemade wheat bread. After that I discovered I'm gluten-intolerant, and now the grinder is my best friend. Brown rice is 99 cents a pound, brown rice flour can be five times that, and getting old besides. My grinder turns brown rice into a flour so fine, it acts like light, fluffy refined flour. I can use straight brown rice flour in place of white rice flour, and nothing heavy settles to the bottom of anything. I don't know if commercial grinders simply don't grind this well, or if it goes rancid too quickly to ship across America, or why what you buy in the store isn't nearly as fine as what I grind at home. I also grind quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth ... all the whole grains at a huge, huge cost savings. My $250 grinder paid for itself a long, long time ago.
For reference, I have a Nutrimill, but I believe that other brand names will also give you a good, light flour. However, you cannot grind seeds or anything containing oil, and while I CAN grind small, dry beans, the grinder hates it and will spit flour all over the kitchen. If I could find something that made good bean flour, THAT would sure cut costs down! I love to add bean flour to make flour blends high protein, but it's so expensive, and I can't tolerate garbanzos.
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A major reason why so many people are currently sensitive to wheat is that 'monoculture' has resulted in a wheat that has a great deal more gluten than the ancient (eg spelt) grains.
So many who can't do wheat can tolerate spelt et al
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Steph, don't know if you're going for wheat-free or gluten-free, but spelt is not gluten-free.
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Thank you so very much for your research, tips and recommendations. The gluten free flour recipe is most sincerely appreciated by this senior. The links are filled with beneficial info too.
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Awesome!
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